For their part, American Jewish organizations might argue that it is unfair to punish Israeli settlements when there are worse human rights offenses in the world and when Palestinians still commit gruesome terrorist acts. But settlements need not constitute the world’s worst human rights abuse in order to be worth boycotting. After all, numerous American cities and organizations boycotted Arizona after it passed a draconian immigration law in 2010.

The relevant question is not “Are there worse offenders?” but rather, “Is there systematic oppression that a boycott might help relieve?”

•YNet looks at Gaza’s new social class: millionaires who made their fortune in the tunnel smuggling business.

Many of the new financial tycoons invested their money in grandiose real estate projects such as luxurious shopping malls and hotels, out of the reach of most Gaza residents. This resulted in a spike in real estate prices that further worsened the economic stagnation. Many of the new millionaires are associated with Hamas leadership, and are involved in money laundering schemes, investing mostly outside Gaza.

As a result, their contribution to the Gaza market is slim, many claim in Gaza. They are furious with the new elite that use their capital to further monopolize the market to their own benefit rather than invest in the local market and create new jobs.

Iranian Atomic Urgency

• Worth reading: David Landau (you read that right) has a bone to pick with critics of the prime minister’s Holocaust rhetoric.

The dispute is, at heart, about power, and preserving it. It’s about the governments of two religiously defined nations using nuclear brinkmanship to distract from the legitimate grievances and explosive restiveness of their own populations.

• BBC Radio 4′s Analysis program assesses the likelihood of war with Iran.

Israel Vida claims that WABC news rdio 770 Rivera said “the Palestinians have been occupied for 60 years – I thought they mostly had Jordanian passports! – There is 250,000 sq miles of Arab territory but they must have the tiny piece of democratic land that has been Israel for thousands of years – land we had to buy back and pay exhorbitantly per acre than the richest farm land in America. In 1933-34 the Palestine Government received from Jews £200,000 in registration fees for land transfers. Before, while Jews were incarcerated in Egypt, Arabs, who Israelites had once taken care of, let the land of milk and honey dry and wither to dust – they made a shit pile of it and had never produced a thing of consequence. We came home – Israel grew again – it cost plenty in blood and fiscal transactions. “Nowere in the world,” comments the RoyalCommission of 1937, “were such uneconomic land prices paid as by the Jews in “Palestine.” – It was the English who set themselves up as protectors and patrons of the Arabs.
It is coming back to haunt! – read “The Rape of Palestine.”